[Kolab-devel] different IMAP server

[Ilja Booij]

Henning Holtschneider wrote:
>>I have a question about the IMAP server in Kolab. I have tried Kolab to
>>see if we can use it as our groupware server. It looks very nice indeed.
>>  The only problem is that we'd like to use it with our own IMAP server
>>(DBMail http://www.dbmail.org). So, my question is, to what extent is
>>Kolab dependent on Cyrus, or is it only dependent on some features of
>>Cyrus (ACL, LDAP authentication)?
> 
> 
> Kolab uses the following Cyrus-related features which might or might not be 
> available in DBMail:
> 
> - - shared folders (not officially supported by Kolab 1.0, though)
> - - folder ACLs to share folders between individual users
> - - Sieve for forward/vacation function
> - - LDAP to retrieve usernames, passwords, email addresses
> - - please correct me if I missed anything here ...
> 
> The Kolab backend modifies Cyrus' configuration files based on template files. 
> You will have to modify the backend script to suite DBMail's needs. From what 
> I saw by looking at the dbmail.org website, it seems that DBMail is storing 
> everything inside a MySQL database. That means that you will have to change a 
> lot on the Kolab backend! Also note that MySQL is not included in the 
> standard Kolab package - and most likely will never be.

You mention that a lot has to be changed in the Kolab backend when using 
an SQL database (currently DBMail can use PostgreSQL or MySQL as its 
backend) as its storage. From reading the architecture paper, I figured 
that most (all?) storage goes on in the IMAP server. Isn't the IMAP 
server also used for retrieving all this information (shared calendars 
etc)? If everything goes through the IMAP interface, there should be no 
problem, because DBMail *should* offer the same interface as Cyrus. If 
other Kolab components use the stored information, bypassing the IMAP 
server, then it's probably a no-go for us.

Ilja